Life is Kaminey

Kaminey was in the news since long. For one, it's a Vishal Bhardwaj movie, and his movies generally receive great critical acclaim (I remember even checking wikipedia to see what play of Shakespere's Kaminey is based on, none is the answer). The cleverly crafted promos and catchy songs (esp. Dhan te tan) had created much hype. Everybody was waiting for it, and then came H1N1 panic. Yes, a real problem was there, but it was hyped beyond proportions (thanks to our responsible media). More to the point, it caused Multiplexes to close. First for four days, then a week. Meanwhile Kaminey was released, and we're like, "multiplexes khulne do, fir jayenge". (One of my friends rode 100km to Pane Pen to watch it). Eventually the multiplexes did open, but I guess the steam had cooled by then. I would have probably missed it, or at least missed it watching in a theater, if not for Lalit and Zarin. Thanks for coming up with a pilan.

We missed the first few minutes of the movie. The most impressive thing I found was that Shahid can act and quite well too. Probably it depends much more on the director than previously imagined. Priyanka's performance is superb too. The growl in her accent does justice to the character. Other performances are good too. The story is simple, even rather trivial, but direction and cinematography set this one apart. On the whole, the narrative feels rather arbitrary, but there are these small things that make almost every scene memorable. Even simple lines like "kaife kaife log, aife aife hote hai..". And that looks exactly like life to me. It may seem arbitrary, and rather trivial on the whole, but there are those small things to make it worthwhile. A song, a book, a movie.. Like I said, Life is Kaminey. And the lesson of the movie (if there is one) is, everybody's a kamina (at some point or another). In this other sense also, Life is Kaminey. Awefome movie! Do not miss!

Enjoy!!